1. Field of the Invention
The present invention generally relates to psychotherapy techniques for treating emotional problems and, more particularly, to a psychotherapy apparatus and method for treating undesirable emotional arousal of a patient.
2. Description of the Prior Art
Many members of society currently demonstrating various undesirable (both pathological and non-pathological) behaviors are burdened with various emotional problems and emotionally-aggravated physical problems. Some examples of these problems are anxiety disorders, asthma, panic attacks, depression, anger, impotence, fears and phobias, grief, headaches, marriage problems, post Electro-Convulsive Therapy confusion, anxiety and memory loss, and post traumatic stress disorder (Vietnam and police service and child abuse and incest). The current undesirable behavior of a person provides connection of a current experience with a historical or more recent negative experience.
Heretofore, the primary mode of conducting psychotherapy for treatment of these problems has been by the use of one therapist with one patient or one or more therapists with a small group of patients. This mode of psychotherapy has been carried out mainly through verbal communication between therapists and patients. A significant drawback of relying primarily on verbal communication to conduct psychotherapy is that a large number of treatment sessions are needed to adequately deal with these problems. An unfortunate consequence of this is that the greater the overall quantity of time consumed in treatment the greater the cost and the fewer the number of persons that can be treated by a given population of therapists with proper qualification and clinical training. Another significant drawback is that some adults and many children are not verbal enough to successfully profit from verbal therapies.
Consequently, a need exists for a different approach to psychotherapy for treatment of emotional problems and emotionally-aggravated physical problems which approach will overcome the above-described drawbacks without introducing new ones in their place.